FIRS Industry Replacement Set - releases

[leifbk]

I want to apply as translator, but if I click the link https://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/ho ... 20LANGUAGE from the front page, I just get a login screen where I have no valid credentials.

[leifbk]

I certainly appreciate all the hard work that's been put into this release, and I'd like to thank all who are responsible for it. However, I've got a few reservations.

I've been playing the new Arctic Basic for a while now, and I don't think that I like it at all. It's all about vehicles, vehicles, and even more vehicles. There's no fish in the sea; everything is geared for vehicles, vehicles, and even more vehicles. The paper mills are producing only paper, and what do you get for it? Rubber, in order to produce vehicles, vehicles, and even more vehicles. And what's this about no breweries? Farms that produce food right off the soil?

I'm planning an alternative arctic industry set with fishing, paper mills that produce manufacturing supplies like before, and probably furniture factories as an alternative recipient of wood. And no fertiliser plants (even if I've grown up in the vicinity of one of the world's largest fertiliser plants at the time, Norsk Hydro's plant at Herøya, Norway), nor any supply yards. And we're quite self-sufficient with clay up here, thank you. We don't need to import it; the last Ice Age deposited a lot of clay here. Mebbe we could import some fruit for our breweries and stores rather than food? And we could probably do with some iron ore. And the oil industry is just plain boring - I'd go for scrapping it altogether. I'll rather see a few brick works around.

I think that the entire vehicle industry would be better suited in a temperate climate, as most of Europe's car industry is located in Germany, France, and Italy. The Brits once had a thriving car industry, but somehow managed to botch it.

[Sylf]

I want to apply as translator, but if I click the link https://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/ho ... 20LANGUAGE from the front page, I just get a login screen where I have no valid credentials.

You'll need to register first.

[leifbk]

You'll need to register first.

Heh, guess I should have figured that out

Anyway, I'm in the Web Translator now. Thanks.

[NekoMaster]

You'll need to register first.

Heh, guess I should have figured that out

Anyway, I'm in the Web Translator now. Thanks.

Unrelated to the thread. I noticed you have a picture of a older man. Perhaps its you? Its nice to have older men around that know stuff

Im just some 23 kid from Ontario, Canada.

[leifbk]

Unrelated to the thread. I noticed you have a picture of a older man. Perhaps its you? Its nice to have older men around that know stuff

Im just some 23 kid from Ontario, Canada.

Yup, that's me. I'm 63 years old, yet often feel like a kid

[wallyweb]

Unrelated to the thread. I noticed you have a picture of a older man. Perhaps its you? Its nice to have older men around that know stuff

Im just some 23 kid from Ontario, Canada.

Yup, that's me. I'm 63 years old, yet often feel like a kid

Stop it! I'm only 70 and both of you are making me feel old.

[Ogre]

Thanks for the new release. I immediately set up a new scenario with the complex economy. Overall, very nice. I especially like the idea of having bauxite be imported rather than mined by a more or less identical chain as iron ore.

The possibility of editing both the requirements and the output increase of the production steps of the primary industries offers plenty of new possibilities for scenarios. Now, screwing up a delivery may have severe consequences for the related production

But...

...I think that the entire vehicle industry would be better suited in a temperate climate, as most of Europe's car industry is located in Germany, France, and Italy. The Brits once had a thriving car industry, but somehow managed to botch it.

Signed. Considering the (more or less stereotype) facts about the northern industries, the chains of iron, metal, fish and lumber (or furniture, if you like) are pretty thinned, if not wiped out, in the new Arctic economy.

[andythenorth]

Alternative economy proposals are often interesting to see. Constraints you'd need to meet for Arctic Basic:

• no more than 20 cargos
• no more than 21 industries, preferably no more than 20
• avoid substantially overlapping the cargos and industries in Temperate Basic or Tropic Basic, challenges for this include:
  • Passengers, Mail, Food, Goods, Chemicals, Engineering Supplies and Farm Supplies are hard to avoid, that leaves 13 cargos
  • At least one source of Food is needed, and at least one town sink industry for Food and Goods
  • Secondary industries that combine cargo tend to need all their input cargos, or plausible substitutes for them
• must include Wood and Paper as classic Arctic cargos
• new cargos and industries can be proposed

http://bundles.openttdcoop.org/firs/rel ... omies.html

[leifbk]

I'd like to see a more traditional Arctic economy, more similar to the one in FIRS 1.x, but with an emphasis on wood and wood products. That is, we could have all the wood-related FIRS industries: Forests and paper mills of course, but also sawmills, furniture factories, lumber yards, etc. Fish and fishing harbours is a must. And the paper mill should produce manufacturing supplies in addition to paper. Farms may be optional, but should at least produce grain, to be processed at breweries or (optional) flour mills. Or we could import grain via bulk terminals. Quarries for sand, stone, and clay, and either brick works or cement factories. The harbours could accept paper / food / building materials, and supply fruit and engineering supplies. Bulk terminals could accept any kind of commodity (clay, bauxite, iron ore or whatever), and provide coal and maybe chemicals. If there's any room for it, I'd love to see the lime kiln. It's a gorgeous building, and the input / output is interesting. And glass works, please.

That's really all there is to it. No oil, fertiliser plants, metal industry, plastic factories. And no vehicle industry.

I can't see any reason why there couldn't be two economies in Sub-Arctic climate as there currently is in the Sub-Tropic, although I'm still of the opinion that vehicle industry isn't a very Scandinavian phenomenon. Sweden has got Volvo and Saab, both struggling to keep their heads above water. There's no other significant industry of the kind. The overwhelming part of the world's car industry is located in temperate climate.

The really important part of any economy, as I see it, is that there should almost always be a choice between where to put resources. That's way the oil industry is so boring. And in the current Arctic, the Forest -> Paper Mill -> Harbour beeline is so trivial that I haven't even tried it.

[Ogre]

I would like to second leifbk's post. Scandinavia is heavily dependent on wood and wood products. But the extracting industry is not that neglectable, thinking of the mining districts in mid and northern parts of Sweden, Finland and Norway. Maybe an export/import terminal with grain <-> ore/metal in arctic and swapping pyrite with complex' iron ore could do the trick...

@andythenorth: I hope my post did not leave you in a bad mood. If so, please accept my apologies. Your work is great and highly appreciated, especially the improvements you did for the complex economy. I certainly understand the difficulties in avoiding overlapping economies... but there is simply no large chemical/vehicle related industry in Scandinavia besides those "two dwarves" leifbk mentioned. Northern America might fit better your economy (here I am somewhat uncertain, perhaps some of the Canadian or US members of this board may give their thoughts).

[leifbk]

Here's a preliminary compilation of proposed industries and cargos for Alternate Arctic economy:

Industries:

Brewery
Brick Works
Builders Yard
Bulk Terminal
Clay Pit
Farm (optional)
Fishing Grounds
Fishing Harbour
Flour Mill
Forest
Furniture Factory
General Store
Glass Works
Iron Ore Mine (or other commodity source for export)
Lime Kiln
Paper Mill
Port
Quarry
Sawmill
Timber Yard

20 Industries

Cargos:

Alcohol
Building Materials
Chemicals
Clay
Coal
Engineering Supplies
Farm Supplies
Fish
Food
Fruit
Goods
Grain
Iron Ore (or other commodity for export)
Mail
Manufacturing Supplies
Passengers
Sand
Stone
Timber
Wood

20 Cargos

Edit: I forgot to include Paper in cargo list. I don't know what to eliminate to satisfy the limit of 20 cargos. But how finite is that limit? Both "Extreme" and "In A Hot Country" have far more cargos.

[andythenorth]

I don't know what to eliminate to satisfy the limit of 20 cargos. But how finite is that limit?

For Basic economies, 20 is the limit.

How many cargos are different between your proposal, and Temperate Basic? http://bundles.openttdcoop.org/firs/rel ... rate_basic

[leifbk]

I don't know what to eliminate to satisfy the limit of 20 cargos. But how finite is that limit?

For Basic economies, 20 is the limit.

How many cargos are different between your proposal, and Temperate Basic? http://bundles.openttdcoop.org/firs/rel ... rate_basic

Building Materials, Grain, Stone, Timber, Wood instead of Livestock, Metal, Milk, Scrap Metal. But as you say,

Passengers, Mail, Food, Goods, Chemicals, Engineering Supplies and Farm Supplies are hard to avoid, that leaves 13 cargos

which is a very limited set. Thus, 4 different cargos is in practice one third of the interchangeable cargos. And then, Iron Ore was an example, and may be swapped for just anything passing for an export commodity, eg. Bauxite or Pyrite. It doesn't matter. We could eliminate the ore entirely and export clay instead; that would leave 20 cargos.

And the list of industries is totally different; there are at least 9 industries not appearing in Basic Temperate:

Brick Works, Builders Yard, Forest, Furniture Factory, Lime Kiln, Paper Mill, Quarry, Sawmill, Timber Yard.

But I get your idea. I may as well start to play Temperate Basic, and leave the Arctic to those inclined to mega-industries with massive output. I prefer small-scale industries, with an output of maybe a few hundred units per month. The new Arctic feels as if Saruman has taken over the business.

[NekoMaster]

Too bad we couldn't just turn industries on and off like with OpenTTD Industries GRF, that way we could have what ever kind of industry set up we want. Though that would probably require a rewrite of FIRS to get that to work properly. Also I imagine that some cargo's/industries would be enabled always (like Passenger, Mail, Food, Goods, etc)

[Ogre]

Too bad we couldn't just turn industries on and off like with OpenTTD Industries GRF, that way we could have what ever kind of industry set up we want. Though that would probably require a rewrite of FIRS to get that to work properly. Also I imagine that some cargo's/industries would be enabled always (like Passenger, Mail, Food, Goods, etc)

The ECS-vectors offer some kind of this feature, too. However, switching industries on and off might cause lots trouble since entire production chains with their respective interchanges are affected. The creators would have to make sure that all affected industries are adjusted/disabled. Just think of a player, who wants to play with the complex economy, switches the iron ore mine off and loads the manganese mine instead. What would / should happen to the steel mill, to the iron works, etc. ?

[andythenorth]

However, switching industries on and off might cause lots trouble since entire production chains with their respective interchanges are affected.

Agreed

One parameter per industry is achievable within newgrf spec. I won't do it, but theoretically it could be forked from FIRS, or from scratch.

If the FIRS 2 industries were used as a base, considerations include:
- the player would need to set and/or check 73 individual industry parameters
- player would need to take care to avoid broken chains
- there are maximum of 32 cargos per-game, but FIRS 2 has 50 defined across all economies. There would need to be a way to configure which cargos are actually used, so probably a parameter per cargo, and at game-start a check and warning if more than 32 are enabled

Other considerations:
- it probably isn't good
- it probably isn't necessary: my guess is that the work simply to configure the parameters for a game is roughly the same as the work to code a new economy

Most of the work for an economy is in designing it. The actual work for implementing an economy is pretty trivial, unless new industries and cargos need to be drawn.

[Scanz]

Guys, i think here is bug or something..
cant load iron ore with MPS iron truck and train too.


confusion with the names, when cattle carry clay, can be supplemented by a description?

[3iff]

That's because the truck is configured to load farm supplies...

You have to refit it.

[Scanz]

That's because the truck is configured to load farm supplies...

You have to refit it.

theres is no PURE iron track. in Firs all trucks have different names from their supplies
example Oil truck delivery Chemicals , Cattle - cLay , etc